this is not a fairy tale
by nevermore199
Summary: This is a love story. And we all know how those end. Kutner x Thirteen. For the 1sentence community at Livejournal.


**Fandom:** House, M.D.  
**Pairing:** Lawrence Kutner x Remy "Thirteen" Hadley  
**Theme set:** Gamma  
**Warning[s]:** General Season 4 and 5 spoilers.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own House.

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#1 – Ring

When Kutner first sees the woman with #13 around her neck, his eyes automatically go to her ring finger, and he can't help the relief that floods through him when he sees that it's empty.

**#2 – Hero**

When Thirteen meets the man with #6 (#9?) around his neck, her initial impression is that he likes to play the hero; after a little time working with him, her thoughts are proven correct, and she can't help but find it kind of cute.

**#3 – Memory**

The first time they talk, it's in the MRI room; he's working up the nerve to speak to her when she looks at him out of the corner of her eye and says with half a smile, "I remember you; didn't you get fired?"

**#4 – Box**

She builds a box around herself, a wall of silence that she refuses to let anyone break; he sees that and he's curious; he wants to open up that box and see what lies inside.

**#5 – Run**

She sees him as nearly her opposite—he's outgoing, openly reckless, and totally willing to do entirely stupid things if he thinks it's right—and while she normally turns and runs at guys like him, for some reason he intrigues her, catches her attention and holds it tight.

**#6 – Hurricane**

Sometimes she straightens her hair and sometimes she lets it go wild; he likes the latter on her, because there's just something so—well, _sexy_ about seeing her looking like she's just come out of a hurricane.

**#7 – Wings**

He's flying with joy when he finds out they've both been hired; at the celebratory drink they all go out to, he's wearing the silliest grin, and she tells him, "He'll reconsider if you keep that look up," and he just grins wider, still soaring.

**#8 – Cold**

"House is going to kill you," she says when she gets in early one cold winter day and finds him putting up Christmas decorations; he just grins at her and replies, "You want to help?"

**#9 – Red**

When he decides to ask her out, it takes him days to work up the nerve; finally—finally—he gets her alone in the office and he forces himself to sputter out the question through a bright red face and stammering lips, and he wonders how he ever got nervous doing anything else, because this has to be the hardest thing he's done in his life.

**#10 – Drink**

His nerves have been obvious all day, and with the redness and sputtering, she was expecting him to propose; so when he asks her out for a date, she can't help smiling as she replies, "Sure, I'll get a drink with you."

**#11 – Midnight**

They're up talking in the bar until midnight, and it's not until she finally makes a hint about getting home that he suddenly realizes that he doesn't even know her name; she sees the look on his face and smiles faintly, then leans over and answers, "Remy Hadley."

**#12 – Temptation**

He walks her to her apartment and lingers there for a moment; he can't help but stare a little openly at the low-cut dress that works _very well_ on her, and he's so sorely tempted that it's practically killing him but he doesn't want to do anything stupid that would scare her away; but just when he thinks about leaving, she grabs him by the collar and leans in, smirking, and her breath is hot as she whispers, "You gonna fuck me or what?"

**#13 – View**

After that, they aren't really _dating_, exactly—they're eating take-out dinners on someone's couch (sometimes) and sleeping together (more than sometimes) and doing absolutely nothing to draw the attention of their coworkers (every minute of the day); and she views the whole thing as just another relationship—at least for now—but he isn't sure what to think about it, because it's like nothing he's ever experienced.

**#14 – Music**

"Hannah Montana?" she asks with a smirk, holding up the open CD case she found on his coffee table; he goes bright red and snatches it from her, mumbling, "My neighbor's kid gave it to me."

**#15 – Silk**

She's never been very good at giving birthday presents—or shopping in general, really—but he seems happy enough when she strips down in his apartment that night and tells him, "I didn't know what to get you for your birthday and Victoria's Secret was having a sale on the silk stuff, so I thought I'd wear something fun."

**#16 – Cover**

The sex is always good, but to him, the afterglow is the best part—when they're lying under the covers and he looks at her with bright eyes, and he thinks that there isn't any place in the world he'd rather be than right here, with her.

**#17 – Promise**

"Promise me you'll never wear that again," she demands the second he answers the door; he smiles sheepishly and says, "The neighbor's kid is having a birthday party and she likes clowns; what am I supposed to do?"

**#18 – Dream**

One night he has a very interesting dream involving Thirteen and his bed and a pair of handcuffs; when she gets to his apartment that night and sees the glint of silver on the bedside table, she looks at him with raised eyebrows and he begins to explain: "I had a dream…"

**#19 – Candle**

Another night he almost hesitantly suggests dinner out somewhere; she gets a mischievous look on her face at that, but agrees, and the next night, they eat Chinese takeout on the park bench in front of her apartment building; in response to his constant baffled looks, she simply says, "I'm not big on the whole candlelight routine."

**#20 – Talent**

When he's drafted into attending his neighbor's kid's talent show, he literally has to beg her to come along; but later, when the neighbor's kid keeps shooting her jealous looks while talking excitedly to Kutner, she decides that maybe it was worth it.

**#21 – Silence**

There is a certain code of silence between them, things that they both know are off-limits—he never asks about the picture of the woman in her wallet or about what House means when he jokes about Huntington's, and she never asks about his birth parents.

**#22 – Journey**

"You know, I never really had you pegged for a Journey fan," she comments, holding up the latest album; he's smiling almost smugly until she continues, "I thought you were devoted to Hannah Montana," and the grin drops from his face like a hot potato.

**#23 – Fire**

Things change abruptly for both of them after the bus crash, and especially after they learn that Amber was Jane Doe #2; he worries about the next one being her, and she finds that the fire that had been propelling her all this time—the one that told her to have fun and not to give a damn about how her mother died—has withered and died.

**#24 – Strength**

She'd always thought of herself as a strong person for not taking the test, for living her life without ever sparing a thought for the possible results; but when she sees that red line of text on the printout, she feels weak through her burning anger, and some part of her wants nothing more than to run straight into his arms and cry.

**#25 – Mask**

She doesn't want him to feel pity for her and it's none of his business anyway, so instead of telling him, she puts on a hard, cold mask; but it only takes him a couple of days to start asking hesitantly if he's done anything to upset her, and she feels like crying just hearing that.

**#26 – Ice**

When she informs him in a stoic voice that she's positive for Huntington's, he knows that she wants him to leave her alone; instead, he walks forward and wraps his arms around her, pulling her close; her skin is icy and he can feel her shaking like a leaf in the wind, and he rubs her back with one hand and whispers in her ear, "I'm sorry."

**#27 – Fall**

She exhales a little when he catches her in an embrace, and she has half a mind to push him away and leave; instead, after a long pause, she hugs him back, staring over his shoulder with empty eyes and feeling like she's falling, falling fast and sinking farther than even he can catch her.

**#28 – Forgotten**

He kind of assumed that their dinner plans for the next night were canceled, so he's nothing short of shocked when she catches him as he's about to leave the hospital and asks, "You didn't forget, did you?"

**#29 – Dance**

After dinner, they somehow end up in a bar, and she somehow ends up knocking back one too many drinks, and he somehow ends up dancing with her out on the floor; the only thing he can see is her, swaying wildly with the music, and he's transfixed and terrified all at the same time.

**#30 – Body**

And after dancing, they go back to his house for obligatory end-of-the-date sex, but it's different from any time before—the way her nails rake across his back hard enough to draw blood, and the way she drags his hands hard down her body, and the way she mashes herself against him, refusing to give him an inch to breathe, as though she's afraid that she'll lose him if she lets go.

**#31 – Sacred**

He worries about her a lot more now, and it pains her every time she catches him staring at her with an anxious look on his face or sees him searching the Internet for Huntington's treatments; she feels horribly guilty for all of it, because as much as it hurts to admit, she cares for him far too much to make him suffer like that.

**#32 – Farewells**

And so she says goodbye to him after work one day; she forces herself not to look directly into his eyes as she talks about _really stressed out lately_ and _just need a break_; and when she finally turns away from his stricken face, she prays that she doesn't see the tears glimmering at the very back of her eyes.

**#33 – World**

After she leaves, he doesn't remember a whole lot until he's in the bar getting cut off; turning to look around, he stares at all of these people and wonders how they can be happy, how they can act so at ease when the whole world is different now, when everything has changed for good.

**#34 – Formal**

She's uncomfortably formal with him the next time she sees him; she nods stiffly and doesn't say hello and turns to leave all in one motion, and he watches her back with a pained expression as she walks away.

**#35 – Fever**

One day not long after this, she's not at work and doesn't call or answer her phone; House designates him as the "checker-upper," and when he lockpicks his way into her apartment and finds her in bed with a high fever and too weak to get to the phone, he drops everything and goes right to her, feeling her forehead and whispering, _It's okay, it's okay, I'm here._

**#36 – Laugh**

She'd almost forgotten just how _nice_ he was—he calls House for her and explains, he leaves briefly and comes back with fever medicine and several cans of chicken soup; when he tries to feed her, tears spring to her eyes and she breaks into hoarse, uncontrollable laughter, because she's happy and she's sad and she doesn't understand.

**#37 – Lies**

And it's so much harder once she gets back to work—one look at him and she thinks of fevers and chicken soup and kindness, and all the lies she's told herself since their breakup—_it's better this way, he deserves better, you don't deserve him_—pile up in her face, and all she wants to do is curl up and cry.

**#38 – Forever**

But she keeps up her hardened façade and she keeps going; she moves forward and moves on (_right?_), and she prays for him to understand, because she knows what he doesn't know—that this is the way things are, the way they have to be, and they're never going to change; it's going to be like this forever.

**#39 – Overwhelmed**

The hints of Foreman and Thirteen come in slowly—looks, nuances, jokes from House—and he's overwhelmed by all of them; they plague him, crush him under heavy weight, and he wants so badly to deny it all, but he can't, and that's what hurts more than anything.

**#40 – Whisper**

"You and Foreman?" he asks outside the office in a hushed but fierce voice; she does not even blink as she looks up at him and says, "It's none of your business, Kutner," her tone the hardest he's ever heard it.

**#41 – Wait**

He flinches at that, and then stares at her hard for a very long moment, and when he finally turns away, the mask she wears cracks just a little, and she opens her mouth to call out _wait, don't go,_ but he is gone and the words die on her tongue.

**#42 – Talk**

They don't talk a whole lot after that—at least not outside of what's necessary to do their jobs—and he really hates it; he just wants things to go back to how they were before—before Huntington's, before complications, maybe even before he fell in love with her.

**#43 – Search**

After he and Thirteen quit talking, everything goes downhill fast—he starts sleeping around a lot more than he used to with girls he's never met and never meets again, and when he searches their faces in the dark, the same question in his mind always rings out: _What are you looking for?_

**#44 – Hope**

But whatever it is he hopes to find, it never shows up, and that is what drags him farther down; that is what wraps its hands around his neck and chokes him in utter despair—the fact that he wanted to win and he's lost.

**#45 – Eclipse**

Even so, there are sometimes things that are more important, things that eclipse all else—like when Thirteen turns up missing and he gets out of House that she's in the hospital with a brain tumor; when he learns about that, he rushes right to her bedside, and even with her in the hospital bed and Foreman next to her, he feels for a moment that everything is like it should be.

**#46 – Gravity**

But all in all, everything is just crushing, like the entire weight of the world pressing on him under gravity, and with all of that, the loss of her is too much to bear.

**#47 – Highway**

And so one night, while driving down the highway, he slowly begins to realize that he doesn't have that much time left, and he decides to at least talk to her one more time before he removes himself from the equation for good.

**#48 – Unknown**

The last time she ever talks with Kutner, she does not know that it is the last time; she does not understand the smile on his face or the look in his eyes, and when he pats her shoulder before saying goodbye and leaving, she does not understand the vague sense of loss in her heart.

**#49 – Lock**

The gun clicks like a key in a lock as he cocks it and points it to his head; as he closes his eyes and readies his finger on the trigger, the last thing he sees is the face of Remy Hadley—his partner in a doomed love story and the woman he loved, only it wasn't enough.

**#50 – Breathe**

When she sees his body, suddenly everything falls apart—the tears come out of nowhere; and she can't breathe through the screaming, the red life pouring from his head; and all she can think is _no no no no no—_

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**This is way harder than it looks. But it's kind of fun, too. : ) And I do love me my Kutner x Thirteen.**


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